Kosmos

Culture, travel, fashion and culinary delights: the Kosmos pages of Lufthansa Magazin bring you interesting and useful tidbits from around the world

Culture clash

Only women and Scotsmen wear “skirts”, you say? Far from it! Airy garments worn around the waist are also popular with men from Greece, India and Polynesia.

Fustanella

Southeastern europe

The fustanella, a white pleated skirt extending well over the knee, is not so much every-day wear as a garment for a special occastion. It looks good and (a shortened version) is also part of the Greek presidential guard’s uniform.

Sarong

Southern Asia

Long pants? Too hot. Shorts? For tourists only. Alternative: the sarong, a wraparound skirt popular in India and Sri Lanka. But take care to get the wrapping over right, gentlemen, or you could soon be going “bottomless.”

Lava-Lava

South pacific

Things are much simpler in Polynesia, where men simply wear a lava-lava, that’s a square piece of fabric they wind around their hips and tie at the ends. Combined with a shirt, tie and suit jacket, it makes a very elegant outfit for a business meeting.

Aztec homeland

A miniature Venice in North America, Mexcaltitán is a manmade island city in the lagoon region on Mexico’s west coast. Legend has it that this is where Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztecs, was located.

Fine dining

Hamburg likes to call itself “The Gateway to the World”, which detractors say begins outside the city limits … Hamburg does have delicious, cosmopolitan food, though – for instance at Nikkei Nine at the Fairmont Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in the city center, which was recently awarded two toques by the Gault & Millau restaurant guide.

Butterfingers

Tibetan monks use butter made from the milk of yaks, a type of log-haired cattle, to create intricate works of art. The thick, pasty mass is colored with mineral pigments an kneaded into Buddha, flowers and animals – a feast for the eyes, even for people with no religious belief.

Parkipelago

A sauna island, a floating mussel farm or the perfect spot for stargaze? With Copenhagen Islands, architects Marshall Blecher and Magnus Maarbjerg want to revive the Danish capital’s old harbor. The first prototype, a wooden platform with a young linden tree, is already afloat.